Car Talking

November 14, 2005

Car TalkingThis isn’t any­thing new, but lately I’ve been notic­ing more car talk­ing going on out there in the world of traf­fic. Car talk­ing (or chat­ting), whichever you pre­fer, is when two vehi­cles pull close to the cen­ter of the road and the dri­vers briefly engage in con­ver­sa­tion about a topic which requires hog­ging of the road.

Most of the time it also means that the per­son behind the “car talk­ers” has to wait momen­tar­ily until they come to their senses and real­ize that while their con­ver­sa­tion might be impor­tant it’s prob­a­bly best to pull aside and get out of their vehi­cles or set up a time later to con­tinue their dis­cus­sion on “chocolate-covered cobwebs.”

When­ever I’m in this sit­u­a­tion, where I’m blocked by the car talk­ers, I typ­i­cally will resort to a cou­ple of meth­ods to put an end to the road nui­sance ahead of me. One method, which I believe we’ve all used, is to mani­a­cally drum on the horn like a fran­tic head hunter with bone-pierced eye­brows. This method, while extremely annoy­ing and chaotic brings the car talk­ers back to real­ity where vehi­cles travel at a decent pace towards their destinations.

The other method is to roll down all of your win­dows, tune your radio to the Oldies sta­tion (My Boyfriend’s Back or Put Your Head On My Shoul­der work great) and turn the vol­ume up as far as it’ll go with­out mak­ing your­self deaf. This hasn’t worked for me as suc­cess­fully as the first method (horn blar­ring), but on occas­sion it seems to drive a point across, that is, either pull over to the side of the road, save your con­ver­sa­tion for a more con­vieni­ant time or face oldies “bumping”. 

8 comments

I have to admit that I haven’t noticed such con­ver­sa­tions tak­ing place. Then again, my cars has a big mouth…lol.

by Jorgeq on November 14, 2005 at 10:20 pm. Reply #

Here across my sur­round­ings, what you get to see often are two bus or truck dri­vers from oppo­site lanes engag­ing into con­ver­sa­tion. Nat­u­rally, this hap­pens only if you’re unlucky enough to have to cross a 2-lane only road to get to work.

by beto on November 15, 2005 at 1:34 am. Reply #

They still go vroom, so what’s the big deal with them anyway?

by AkaXakA on November 15, 2005 at 12:29 pm. Reply #

I’m a fairly new dri­ver; how­ever, I’ve yet to notice such on the roads. But it’s always good to take a few point­ers on how to han­dle one if you do come accross such an event. Fur­ther­more, I was won­der­ing, where is that pic­ture of the two cars from? From what I can tell, it seems to be 2 BMW 3-series and that is one of my all time favourite cars. I’d love to know if there is a wall­pa­per of it somewhere.

by NIMA on November 17, 2005 at 3:17 am. Reply #

Jorgeq: One of these days you will wit­ness such an occurence. When you do, remem­ber all of those who have endured through these sit­u­a­tions. Remem­ber, pound­ing on your horn always seems to work!

Beto: I dis­like cross­ing two-way traf­fic, period. It just freaks me out, hav­ing to check both ways and never know­ing if at the last sec­ond some­one might speed up or turn the cor­ner is fright­en­ing. When­ever I’m about to cross two-way traf­fic I always throw cau­tion to the wind and just bolt out there like Bo Duke.

AkaX­akA : It’s not the vrooom­ing really, it’s moreso the fact that peo­ple use their cars to engage in con­ver­sa­tions, some­times in the mid­dle of traffic.

NIMA: Yes, it’s some­thing (as I men­tioned above) that you’ll wit­ness first hand and then of course resort to cer­tain mea­sures to get the traf­fic flow­ing again.

As for the pic­ture, send me an email (erik@kartooner.com) and I’ll send you a high-resolution ver­sion of the photo.

by kartooner on November 17, 2005 at 9:48 am. Reply #

One of my old favourites that one of my friend plays fre­quently (gen­er­ally on hol­i­day and in traf­fic) is ‘silly bug­ger’.
When he’s in a queue he waits a while until the traf­fic in front has move on about one car-length and then offers for the car at a junc­tion to go infront of him. Then, just as they start to acceller­ate he pulls quickly into the gap and pre­tends they didn’t exist..

Harsh, but amus­ing to the passengers.

by Dave on November 19, 2005 at 5:52 am. Reply #

I pre­fer the horn method!

by Ashley Bowers on November 26, 2005 at 9:26 pm. Reply #

Inter­est­ing idea. Horn is still the best metod. Of course if you have some­thing heavy and use­less in the hand you can use it :)

by Eugene on December 8, 2005 at 1:07 pm. Reply #

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